In one conventional arrangement, a computer includes network adapters that have ports that are coupled to a network. In operation, two or more of the ports can be teamed together for purposes of fault tolerance, link aggregation, or load balancing.
Typically, the association of the ports into the teaming relationship, and the parameters of the ports and the teaming relationship are manually, statically configured by a human user of the computer. This inherently limits the ability of the ports and/or team to adapt to changing network conditions without human intervention, and indeed, a significant amount of such intervention may be involved in manual reconfiguration to respond to such changed conditions. This increases the time and expense involved in maintaining and operating the computer and/or network.
Additionally, such changed network conditions may make it no longer desirable to maintain a port in an active operational state in a given team. However, the above limitations of this conventional arrangement may result in the port remaining actively powered up in the team, despite these changed conditions, until such time as the human user reconfigures the team. This may reduce the efficiency and increase the power consumption of the computer and/or network.
Although the following Detailed Description will proceed with reference being made to illustrative embodiments, many alternatives, modifications, and variations thereof will be apparent to those skilled in the art. Accordingly, it is intended that the claimed subject matter be viewed broadly.